The Medieval Murderers - The First Murder

As Doll observed him, he looked nervously down the length of the obelisk towards where Joe would emerge. He must have heard something. She decided to act before he got worried and ran for it. She stepped out from the base of the stone and strode towards the figure.

‘Hello, Étienne. What have you found? Cleopatra’s cartouche?’

The Frenchman spun round, astonished at Doll’s presence.

‘Cleopatra? What do you mean?’

‘It was you, wasn’t it? Who stole Joe’s notebook with my translation of the cartouche in it. You could tell from the different handwriting that it was my discovery, not Joe’s. And that my experimental replacement of the two “ke”s at the end of the word with “a”s gave me most of a familiar name. Cleopatra. That is why you decided to murder me at the Royal Coburg. You could not bear the thought that a mere Englishwoman would beat you to the great prize of deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics. Unfortunately for you, and Morton Stanley, the bath I was in was misplaced. So your heavyweight trap fell on the wrong person. You even absented yourself from the theatre at the moment the apparent accident was to take place so as not to be suspected of foul play.’

Quatremain sneered, recovering his sang-froid.

‘Yes, I invited myself to Bankes’s celebration of the arrival of the obelisk to these shores.’ He patted the prostrate stone. ‘So neither of us was at the theatre when the… accident happened.’

He took a step away from the obelisk, and closer to the quayside.

‘No one could accuse either of us of dropping the counterweight on you. And neither of us would be suspected of knowing enough of backstage matters to set the trap, if it was seen as something more than a mere accident.’

‘Except you made the mistake of telling me that your uncle was once the manager of the Comédie Française in Paris.’

Quatremain poked with his cane at the gaps in the stone slabs of the quay. His right hand was behind his back.

‘Ah. I had thought that you would not remember me saying that. Now I have two reasons to kill you.’

‘Before you do, do tell me what you were doing to the obelisk.’

‘I was trying to obliterate the Cleopatra cartouche so that neither you nor Bankes would see it and get to decipher hieroglyphs before I did. Now I must use this hammer for another purpose.’

He brought his hand from behind his back, and swung the hammer he held in it high in the air. But before he could bring it down, Malinferno, who had been sneaking up behind Quatremain as Doll diverted his attention, grabbed at his arm. However, the Frenchman must have seen the look in Doll’s eyes, betraying her accomplice’s presence to him. He twisted round at the last moment, and Malinferno missed Quatremain’s upraised arm. Instead he caught his shoulder, and the Frenchman stumbled sideways. He dropped the hammer, and reached out to break his fall. But there was nothing behind him but air. He teetered on the brink of the quay, and his elegant shoes slipped on the wet, rainy surface. The edge of the dock was curved and did not help him regain his balance. For a long moment he hung in the air. Then he moaned and, still clutching his cane, fell into the waters below.

Cautiously, both Joe and Doll stepped to the edge of the quay, and peered into the inky Thames. The tide was fast flowing out to sea, and Quatremain had already disappeared into the river’s depths. Malinferno ran up and down the quayside for a while, but could see nothing of the Frenchman.

Then Doll cried out, ‘Look!’

She pointed downstream at the middle of the torrent. Malinferno gazed hopelessly into the teeming rain, the gap between the downpour and the river hardly discernible. Then he spotted what Doll had seen. An elegantly clad arm was raised above the waves holding on to a silver-topped cane. To Malinferno, it resembled the outstretched arm of the Lady of the Lake holding Excalibur. But then, he had been embroiled in several Arthurian escapades lately, and his fevered fancy was aroused. As they both watched, the arm slid slowly beneath the waters, still clutching the cane.

Malinferno and Doll Pocket met Augustus Bromhead in the eerily silent Royal Coburg Theatre the following day. Will Mossop was supposed to be present, but had left a note with Job, the stage-door man. It apologised for his absence due to ‘pressing matters’. Bromhead sighed.

‘He means he is busy finding a replacement for The Play of Adam , which has been cancelled.’

Doll joined her sigh to Bromhead’s as she scuffed at the chalk cross on the stage that was to mark the place of her death.

‘I suppose that, after losing the leading man, today’s news was the final straw for the production.’

Everyone knew to what she was referring. Since the farce of the King’s coronation, and her failure even to gain access to the Abbey, Queen Caroline had taken to her bed. She complained of persistent stomach pains, for which she took copious amounts of milk of magnesia laced with laudanum. Late on the previous night, when Joe and Doll were struggling with Étienne Quatremain in Deptford Docks, Caroline had given up her struggle to live. Her death had put an end to Mossop’s topical version of Augustus’ rediscovered play. No one was in the mood to satirise a dead queen. Actually, Doll was not too disappointed.

‘I don’t think I’m cut out to be an actress, Joe. It’s too much like hard work.’

Bromhead also expressed some relief at the demise of the project.

‘My heart ceased to be in the production ever since Mossop changed it into a modern satire, I must say. And as for the curse of “Cain and Abel”, it has convinced me to lock the manuscript and the old book in a box well away from prying eyes. As I have no children, I have bequeathed all my books to the boy of my second cousin. Thackeray by name. Young Will is a bit of a ne’er-do-well and I don’t suppose he will amount to much, or even read any of my collection. Though he may pass it on to a library, if he has any sense. Personally, I hope The Play of Adam is never found again, or if it is, that no one tries to revive it. The first murder in history should be the only one associated with this cursed play.’

Surrey, July 1944

He limped into the Senior Common Room and tossed a file of dog-eared lecture notes onto the stained table near the door. This held a kettle simmering on a gas ring, a collection of odd cups and saucers, a battered tin tea-caddy, a large brown china tea pot and a tin of National Dried Milk donated by the assistant librarian, who had small children.

‘Harry’s had another of his brain-storms,’ the newcomer announced glumly, as he poured himself a cup of over-stewed Brooke Bond and stirred it vigorously to break up the lumps of milk powder. ‘He’s decided the college needs a diversion from the Second Front, so we have to put on a medieval play to entertain visitors at the Open Day next month!’

The only other occupant of the SCR groaned.

‘Why the hell can’t Harry stick to The Importance of Being Earnest or Jack and the Beanstalk , like any normal person?’

‘Harry’ was the covert nickname for Dr Hieronymus Drabble, the Reader and Head of the History Department at Waverley College, beloved by none of his small staff. The first man sank into a sagging armchair of worn Rexine and sipped his tea as he stared around the room. The grand title of Senior Common Room, which conjured up visions of a sedate chamber in a venerable Oxford college, seemed misplaced for this seedy place more suited to an inner-city secondary school. But Peter Partridge was not looking at the familiar décor and furnishings, but was casting a critical eye at the windows. In charge of Air-Raid Precautions at the college, he stared at the wide strips of sticky tape that crisscrossed the panes of glass to minimise the possibility of blast injuries and then at the heavy curtains of black cloth that had to blank out the slightest glimmer of light after dark. Obsessive about his responsibilities, he satisfied himself that a broken hook on one rail had been replaced by the college caretaker.